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Saturday, 31 August 2013

Chatting with Cats

It’s a dark
and stormy morning and I blunder out of the bedroom past the easy chair that
Yorick habitually takes his early morning nap on. I will bend down to within
easy eye-shot and he will give an off-hand early morning “purrp” from behind
his tail and I will respond with a comradely “Hi”.

"Purrp" - which may mean "morning"

This
morning the chair is empty – but weirdly as I look down I hear in my head a familiar
“purrp”. Strange how habits can perpetuate. Perhaps this is how legends of
ghostly music and odd sightings have occurred. Vestiges of memories of
commonplace events have become somehow imprinted on the subconscious (there's a
blog subject in there!). I hear again in the crown of my head the ghostly
greeting but this time with a yawning meow which snaps me out of my extra-sensory
musings because Yorick is actually above my head, lazily sprawled across
the fish tank. He’s obviously been chatting to Jaws and Susan the two elderly
inhabitants of that dank, green and foetid watery realm.

The rub of
course is that I have absolutely no idea what the usual early morning “purrp”
means, nor do I know what the early morning “purrp” followed by a yawning meow
means either – although I suspect that a “purrp” from the favourite chair is
different from a “purrp” from a high level fish tank - especially when modified
by a yawning meow.

Communication
with cats is not easy, and I suspect has never been easy.

Cat conversing with a Toad. An
inverted conversation.

Cat conversing with a Lizard. A frank and fearless
exchange.

With dogs
it is an entirely different affair.

With puppies
the number one priority is to establish an early rapport by exchanging names.
And this can usually be accomplished fairly quickly, although I have never
really succeeded in getting any of our dogs to say “Steve”. They seem to have
difficulty in getting their tongue around the sibilant “S”, the palatal “T”,
the tongue against the back of the lower dentures to make “E” and the lower lip
against the upper dentures to get the “V” sound. In fact they are crap at it
and there are times when I wish I had been called “Grwoof” instead. Life would
have been so much simpler, although on reflection I suspect I would have been
bullied at school more than I actually was.

Well once
you’ve sorted out the naming business (albeit a little one-sided, unless of
course you are called “Grwoof”, in which case I am deeply jealous) all
the rest just slips into place.

Here are
some essential words from the Mitchell
Dog/Human Lexicon.

·“Sit”
means wait expectantly for a dog biscuit.

·“Down”
means

a) if you are in the sitting position, lie down in the hope that you will get a dog biscuit, or

b) if you are rearing up on your hind legs with your front paws
suggestively stuck in the ample bosom of one of the ladies from book-clubget the hell off you over-familiar hound and
there is no ways you’re getting any biscuits, ever again

·“Fetch”
is simple. It means run after the ball and don’t quite bring it all the way
back to the thrower (the “chukka”)

·“Bring”
means will you please bring the bloody
ball all the way back and stop dropping it just out of reach.

·“No”
means whatever you are doing - stop it

·“Kitchen”
– means get the hell out of wherever you
are and go in the general direction of the kitchen and stay there for an
undefined period of time.(see also living dangerously for alternative usage)

·“Grwoof”
means there is a disturbance at the
bottom of the garden but we’re on to it.

·“RrRgRwooF”
means if those bastard dogs from Dr
Wasswas’s place get any nearer we will tear them limb from limb. Yeah
right!

·“Rwoof
rWoof” means although you don’t seem to
be aware of it you are sitting within 2 metres of a large and fearsome snake
and while we are not getting any nearer we respectfully advise you to
beat a hasty but measured retreat.

Chap with Dogs. The vocabulary is actually a common one.

And talking
of dog biscuits, I can safely say that having shared a biscuit or two with the
dogs during an idle hour messing around on the kitchen floor trying to see things
from their point of view; they are nothing to write home about. For some reason
I had expected them to taste somewhere between Twiglets and Ryvita spread with
Marmite. Not a bit of it! They taste exactly as they look – like brittle
cardboard. I had hoped that being fed a sweetmeat shaped vaguely
like a bone by one’s wife that I would have experienced something of the quivering pleasure
clearly enjoyed by the dogs – and who knows, a frisson of something else?
Instead your mouth ends up feeling like the inside of an elderly cornflake
packet with a really bad aftertaste and an overwhelming need to drink something
with a very high alcohol content. How the dogs stay sober after receiving such
rewards beats me, although their all-consuming sense of euphoria suggests high
octane ethyl-alcohol.

Okay so
that’s dog communication sorted.

Goldfish
are a complete mystery to me, because I suspect that they communicate with the
outside world using some form of complex whole body sign language interspersed
with the odd bubble. For the dogs this lack of interspatial communication does
not seem to be an issue. The fish tank is well above canine eye level and as
such simply does not exist. Yorick on the other hand has had several
conversations with the Jaws and Susan and seems to have built up a rapport with
them although to what extent they are reacting to the odd “purrp” that he
flings at them it is difficult to tell. But I digress . . . .

Yorick strikes up a conversation with Jaws, or is it Susan?

Moles I am
not sure about, not having ever met one in the flesh as it were. I do feel that
they must communicate with what in England are referred to as regional brogues,
in other words accents with a rather pleasing and beguiling twang much loved in
TV comedies.

Spotted Eagle Owls
(smallkittenus eatus) obviously go
“WooHoo Wuhoo” which means either “When shall we three meet again?”, or “Wow!”
Both of which are well known quotes with classical allusions as I am sure you
will have spotted.

But
returning to cats, given the paucity of information about Cat/Human interaction
Yorick and I are about to embark (sorry!) on an extensive study of this
mysterious area of communication. Already however I can see potential intellectual
dissonance; I approach this subject from a neo-modernist Marxist view point –
where as Yorick is a declared Meowist.

Watch this
space!

Yorick and the late Shadow bone up on language - any
language!

Although to be honest I have little expectation of anything in the least useful coming out of the exercise . . .